“Yours or Fish’s or the Mogul’s, it’s all the same now,” retorted Flash Povey, taking a large shiny revolver from his pocket and laying it on the table by his side. “It’s a clumsy plant, though I didn’t expect much better from that mob.”
Skibby Legg sat bewildered, turning his eyes from the glassy gaze of Flash Povey to the pistol on the table, and back again — always back again to Povey’s eyes. What the man meant Legg could not guess.
The Mogul was a name he had heard as he had heard Povey’s — coming as an echo from above. The Mogul was not a gonoph — a thief — in the common sense, but a speculator in theft; a designer of scoundrelism, a backer of scoundrels, a financier of large fraud; the head, or thereabouts, of the whole trade, and as safe from the police as any man in London. So much Skibby knew, but the rest of Flash Povey’s meaning was beyond his guess. He stammered some words of desperate protest, but Povey cut him short.
“You can’t kid me like that,” said the grinning phthisic. “I expected something of the sort, but I thought it ‘ud be a trifle cleverer.” He had the pistol in his hand now, and Legg’s distress was that he could not watch that and the man’s eyes at the same time. “At any rate you don’t expect to kid me, do you?”
Skibby Legg managed to stutter that he didn’t know nothing about it, s’elp him.
“Know nothing? Pah! They were eight notes from the Phoenix Hotel job, an’ the woodenheadest rozzer in London knows the numbers by heart. I was to go out an’ be pinched at the front gate with ‘em on me, an’ get a lagging. It ‘ud suit the Mogul to put me away for a few years, an’ there’s been a nark of his piping the house all day. Does he think I’m a baby? Eh?” The red spots on Povey’s face stood now like blood-gouts on a corpse, and his grin was ghastly. “But you needn’t bother about it — you’re not going back to him!”
Skibby Legg’s gaze left Povey’s eyes from that moment, and fixed instead on the little steel circle that was thrust so close before them that they seemed to cross in a terrified squint. For some while now he saw no eye but the foremost eye of the pistol, and the little group of dimmer eyes that lurked behind that. But he heard Povey’s voice, and the words seemed to come beating on the crown of his head.
“No, Skibby Legg, you’re not going back. I’m going to die myself before very long, they say; but you’re going to die first. That’s what they counted on — I’d get sentenced for the notes, and my light ‘ud go out in the jug. But I want the rest of my life out of stir, you see. I’ll have it so; and so will you, for you are going to die in five minutes. Eh?”
The words beat on the crown of Skibby’s head, and some solid thing rose and swelled in his chest till it stopped at his throat and began to choke him. Povey went on.
“I meant to have had a talk to you before, but I’ve been too busy. I might never have found the time — I might never have found you — if you hadn’t come to me yourself, and brought me this other little bill to settle. For there was one owing already — oh yes! You wouldn’t understand, perhaps. You look up to me, Skibby Legg — you call me ‘sir.’ Envious of me, Skibby Legg? Proud of your scholar? Outside they will tell you I have never been convicted. You know a little better, but it’s very nearly true. I make yellow quids at the game while you can’t make brown ha’pennies. You put me on to that game, and perhaps you think I owe you a turn for it! Yes, I do, and you shall have it, Skibby Legg! You shall have it! You took me in hand — a boy that might have been anything — and you showed me an easier game than hard work. You showed me the trick, and you took what it fetched, till the day I was collared in that area, and then you bolted and left me. I got my first conviction for that — my only dose, but it was enough. There was only one way for me after that, and I took it, and here I am. Here I am, and you envy me; I have done so well that I ought to be grateful, eh? Eh? If you had cut my throat you would have got the rope round your neck; but you taught me to dip the lob, and you won’t understand when I tell you how grateful I am. Grateful as the hangman’s rope, Skibby Legg! And now you come to get me my second conviction, and I really can’t let my account run any longer. You’d have done better to have cut my throat, Skibby Legg, when you might have done it. The hangman might not have got you, but nothing can save you from me!”
Skibby Legg’s mouth opened, but there came no sound but a dry choke. His hands lost their hold of the chair frame beneath him, and wandered weakly in space. The steel eye came nearer till he saw it no more, but suddenly felt it, cold and small, on his forehead.
His hands wandered, and his mouth opened. In intent he was pleading, begging his life, but he heard no sound from his own lips.
“Cool against the forehead, isn’t it? It won’t last long. A little sickish? A little sickish, Skibby Legg? Of course: you’re dying, you know. Usual to feel a little sickish. It’ll be all over presently — when I pull the trigger. You’re nearly through it — all but that; just the crash. Only the crash, and it’s over. You are dying — dying—”
Skibby Legg rose three inches in his chair and fell back, with a faint pule in his throat. His senses shrank to one, through which nothing reached him but a roaring as of a great sea...And then —
Flash Povey coughed, and put the pistol back on the table; and presently Legg could see him again, his wolfish grin persisting, his glassy eyes unmoving in their dark pits, his hands resting on his thin knees.
“Speaking of the crash reminded me,” he said. “The noise would be very inconvenient. They would come in and find your carcass — and find me. Wouldn’t do. Besides, my landlady is a very respectable woman — wholly unconnected with the trade you taught me and it would be bad for her; bad for her carpet, too, and the ceiling underneath. No — I sha’n’t do it. You’ve died already, as far as your feelings go; all but the crash, as I said — the easiest part of it. As for the rest — I really believe it’ll hurt you a deal more in the long run to let you live. You’ve a deal to go through, Skibby Legg, in your way of life, and you’ll have to die again at the end of it. Yes — I’ll think over the question of letting you live a bit. Drink this — it’s brandy.”
Flash Povey thrust the edge of the glass between Legg’s shaking jaws, and tilted it. Legg swallowed greedily, and then sat, a limp heap, staring before him. Presently he caught his breath sharply, and began to sob. Then he dropped his face on his hands, and burst into tears.
For a little while Povey watched him, grinning and coughing by turns. Then he rose and shook Legg by the shoulder. “This won’t do,” he said. “Get up, and come for a walk. Take some more brandy if you want it; but pull yourself together till I turn you off the premises.”
Skibby Legg looked up and began: “S’elp me, sir, I never—”
But Povey cut him short. “Drink the brandy, and then shut your mouth,” he said. “You’ve made all the noise I want in my place already.”
Legg took the glass with a feeble hand, and emptied it at a gulp. Povey took him by the arm.
“Come,” he said, “you’re a stronger man than I am: stand up and walk. I’m not going out by the front, where your friends are waiting; there’s another way.”
They went down the stairs, out at the back, and across the little garden to a door in the farther wall. This passed and closed, they stood in a footway with garden walls on each side.
“I’m just going to see you safe away from your pals,” Povey said quietly. “Don’t forget I’ve got the revolver with me; remember it if you’re tempted to try bolting, or shouting, or anything of that sort. That way.”
He pushed Legg before him to the end of the passage, and then walked by his side through a succession of back streets. The brandy had revived Skibby Legg, and the night air calmed his nerves. He began to speak.
“I never wanted to nark you, sir,” he protested. “S’help me, I on’y come with the message from Fish! I don’t know nothin’ about—”
“You needn’t talk,” Povey interrupted. “Anything you say’s more likely to be a lie than not, even if it�
��s probable; and that isn’t probable.”
They went between posts set in a narrow passage, and down a few steps to a canal towpath. This way was often used in daylight by foot-passengers as a short cut, but now it lay dark and empty.
“Skibby Legg,” said Povey, “there’s the water. Wouldn’t you rather end it all there? I should if I were you.”
Legg backed away quickly from the edge. “No, sir,” he whined, “no — don’t begin on me again, sir! S’elp me, I thought I was doin’ you a turn — I did!”
The pistol was shining faintly in Povey’s right hand, and he took a hold of Legg’s coat with the left. “Don’t try to break away or call out,” he said softly, “or it’ll come quicker. I think I may as well finish now; it was only for my own convenience that I put it off before.” The pistol crept toward Legg’s face as Povey spoke. “There’s no reason why I shouldn’t do it here now, and I think I will.”
The revolver tapped Legg’s forehead twice, and Povey’s face was demoniac behind it. “Now, Skibby Legg, Skibby Legg,” he said, “what time shall I give you? It’s now, Skibby Legg, now!”
Legg pulled feebly, and pleaded, now, with a voice of broken whispers. “Not now! Oh, not now! Not to-night! I’ll do anything! Let me go — let me go to my children!”
Povey withdrew his pistol a little way, and his grin grew more thoughtful. “Children?” he said. “So you’ve got children? I hope you’re bringing them up as you did me! You shall go to them — for to-night, at any rate. Teach them to dip the lob! Go to them to-night, and I’ll watch you home. I’ll not lose track of you, Skibby Legg!”
II.
SKIBBY LEGG’S wife was perplexed by an odd change. Hitherto, whatever his failure in other respects, her husband had eaten and slept as well as any man. Now he woke at night in fits of crying, clutching at her and pleading incoherently for his life; and he lay in a tremble for an hour after each fit. At daytime he skulked at home. She had known him do this before; but he had never before failed to eat the most of whatever meal their doubtful resources might provide, and now he scarce ate at all. He drank, however, whenever he could get the means or the invitation. Like many weak men, he had been something of a tyrant at home, and now he would make no clear explanation of his trouble, and resented questions. She saw him once, as she went about her search for charing, with a well-dressed man, hectic, hollow-eyed, and coughing; and when she mentioned the fact later, and asked questions, he was first angry and then tearful, but he would tell her nothing.
A little after this he “got into trouble,” which meant that he had six months’ imprisonment for a bungled theft at a shop-door. And though the six months was a sore time of struggle and privation for Mrs. Legg, she was rewarded to see her husband emerge a sounder man than he went in. He slept now, and could eat.
It was a little after his release that a friend proposed to him a joint enterprise in blue pigeon flying. Blue pigeon flying is no matter for the bird-fancier, but consists in the ripping out and carrying away of lead sheeting and pipes from empty houses. Carefully done, it is regarded as a safe branch of the game; and if two work together, at a suitable place, they can make it pay fairly well. In this case the place was a rat-riddled warehouse on the borders of Homerton Marsh — a place that would seem, at first glance, to have been stripped long ago. But Bob Wickens had looked farther, and reported that there was not only blue pigeon in plenty, but brass taps and gas-fittings. You might go to and fro half a dozen times, he said, and do well at every journey. He and Skibby Legg, as a matter of fact, only went once, and what happened on that occasion Bob Wickens confided to Snorkey Timms, after an inquest at which Bob had been a witness.
“O’ course,” said Bob, “I didn’t say where I’d bin, nor what I’d bin doin’. ‘Tain’t likely, even if they’d wanted it. But as a matter o’ fact me an’ Skibby ‘ad bin along to that old ware’us there by the ‘marsh, after blue stuff. ‘E was balmy — no doubt about that, an’ I shouldn’t ‘a’ ‘ad ‘im in it if I’d rumbled it soon enough, but I didn’t. He seemed all right, goin’ along. But ‘e’d just ‘ad six months, and p’raps that upset ‘im. Anyway ‘e was off ‘is ‘ead — that I do know. There was a wall with a gate in it, but I’d readied the gate the night afore, an’ we was inside in a jiff. It was daytime, o’ course — afternoon. It wouldn’t ‘a’ done to go about a place like that with a light at night-time — you’d ‘a’ ‘ad the whole parish a-starin’. We climbed in at a winder — there was thick bars, but on’y screwed in.
“Well, as soon as we was inside, Skibby gives a jump. “‘What’s that noise?’ says ‘e.
“‘Rats,’ I says. ‘The place is alive with ‘em.’ An’ so it was. When I first went to take a look at it I see ‘em an’ ‘eard ‘em everywhere — they very nigh jumped on me.
“‘Oh,’ says Skibby, starin’ dull an’ rum in the eyes. ‘Rats, is it? All right, if it’s on’y rats.’
“So we legged it up the dancers, ‘cos the stuff was on the top floor an’ the roof. Skibby was all jumpy, an’ the farther up we went the jumpier ‘e got. ‘E backed away sudden from every door, an’ every now an’ then ‘e turned round an’ looked ‘ard down the stairs.
“‘What’s up with you?’ I says.
“‘I don’t like this place,” says Skibby; ‘it’s full o’ — full o’ rats; and noises.’
“It’s a fact there was noises, but it was what the rats made; they was everywhere. But a rum thing I did notice when we got near the top was that some o’ the rats began to foller us, Not snappish, nor anything like that, you understand, but just trottin’ up close behind like tame ‘uns — or more like frightened ‘uns, if you understand. Like a little dawg as gets close behind ‘is master when ‘e sees a big dawg comin’. But Skibby, ‘e never seemed to notice ‘em, but kep’ on starin’ wide all round ‘im, like as if ‘e was afraid o’ someone pop-pin’ out at ‘im.
“Well, there was a room a-top o’ the place where there was a row o’ taps an’ a lot o’ thick pipe an’ a trough agin the wall, lined with lead. It was the best part o’ the job, an’ good for a fust-rate sackful in twenty minutes. So I outs with the chisels an’ ‘ammers to get to work, but Skibby wouldn’t touch ‘em. ‘E took no notice o’ me, but stuck with ‘is back to the trough, starin’ at the door we come in by.
“‘Ketch ‘old,’ I says. ‘Are you drunk, or what?’
“But ‘e on’y stood an’ stared at the door; so I wasted no more time. I began a-pullin’ down the pipes on my own. ‘A fine cop bringin’ you,’ I says. ‘I bet you’ll be on the job when it comes to takin’ your whack, anyhow,’ I says. So I got on puffin’ away the pipes. An’ then I see as the rats was gatherin’ thick under the trough — between us an’ the wall, you see. Such a rum start as that I never see in my life. They come sneakin’ along the corner o’ the wall all round — it was a cement floor — an’ bunchin’ up in a sort o’ heap under the trough an’ the rummiest thing was all of ‘em was lookin’ an’ sniffin’ one way — between our legs at the door. I let go the pipe to look at ‘em; an’ then I heard Skibby go down whack on the floor, makin’ noises like a chained-up dawg.
“‘‘Elp, Bob!’ ‘e calls out. ‘‘Elp! Don’t let ‘im do it, Bob! Take it away from ‘im, Bob!’
“I turned round, an’ there ‘e was on the floor, on his knees an’ one hand, fencin’ away with the other ‘and in front of ‘im.
“‘For God’s sake have mercy!’ ‘e said; a-talkin’ to the empty room between ‘im an’ the door. ‘For God’s sake have mercy! I’ve died — I’ve died a dozen times a’ready! Ain’t it enough? Not now! Let me go! Let me go to my children!’
“I took him by the arm an’ spoke to him, but he never turned his head; an’ his face was worse than any corpse’s I ever see. An’ s’elp me, I looked under the trough, an’ there was the rats all round the other way, tails out, shovin’ their noses down into the corner, an’ fightin’ to get deeper in the crowd! I knelt down aside of Skibby, an’ shook him,
an’ he groaned, an’ fell of a heap — sort o’ fainted.
“I’d had enough for a bit, so I shoved the hammers an’ chisels in the sack an’ rolled it up, an’ I shook up Skibby again, an’ started to get him out of it. He rolled up pretty dull an’ stupid with a bit more shaking, an’ I got him down the stairs. An’ when we went out o’ the room I see the rats sneakin’ off both ways along the corner of the wall an’ round to the door.
“I dragged ‘im through the winder somehow, an’ out on the marsh. ‘What’s come to you, Skibby?’ I says. ‘Are you balmy?’
“‘Didn’t you see ‘im?’ says he, hangin’ onto me tremblin’; ‘didn’t you see ‘im?’
“‘See who?’ says I.
“‘Flash Povey,’ says Skibby.
“‘Flash Povey!’ says L ‘Why, he’s been dead a month!’
“An’ so he had. He pegged out while Skibby was doin’ his six months, you remember.”
“Um,” said Snorkey Timms. “An’ that’s all?”
“That’s all what I didn’t tell the coroner,” answered Bob. “But I said ‘e seemed very much off ‘is rocker while ‘e was with me. An’ when we got to the canal he would go down along the towpath, though it wasn’t ‘is way ‘ome.
“‘Go along, Bob,” ‘e says; ‘you leave me alone. I’ll be better in a bit.’
“I didn’t quite know what to do, but I thought I’d come along an’ tell ‘is missis ‘e seemed a bit roundmy-’at. An’ so I did. An’ they found ‘im in the canal the next morning.”
HEADS AND TAILS
A BLOT ON ST. BASIL
IN the parish of St. Basil-in-the-East there is like to be a vacancy for a male Bible-reader, for committees are aflare at the scandalous misuse of some part of Mr. Albert Murch’s last week’s pay. It was not extravagant pay for a week, being, in fact, some way short of a sovereign. But it was explained to him at his appointment that the consciousness of doing good should support him: not to mention his old mother. And many people — on the committees, for instance — worked zealously for no other reward whatever: as was notorious everywhere; and if it were not notorious, truly it was by no neglect of the committees.
Delphi Complete Works of Arthur Morrison Page 230